The LeBaron Secret (44 page)

“I won't put the baby up for adoption!” Joanna had said.

“You will damn well do what we tell you to do, young lady!” her father had roared. “You're a minor, and we are your parents, and you will do as we say!”

“I won't!”

“You
will!
” her father said, raising his arm as though to strike her.

“Her debutante season,” Constance LeBaron had sobbed.

“If you try to make me give my baby away, I'll go all over town—right now—and tell everybody that I'm pregnant with an illegitimate baby! How will you hold your heads up in this town after that? I'll tell them I'm pregnant by Immaculate Conception!”

Monsignor Quinn crossed himself again.

“You wouldn't do that to us!” her mother had said.

“Oh, wouldn't I? Just wait and see!”

“Oh, Father, Father,” Constance LeBaron had sobbed, and it was not clear whether she was talking to her husband, or to the Holy Father, or to Father Quinn, who had only recently been made a monsignor. “What are we going to do?”

“First, let us pray,” Monsignor Quinn said, raising his hand to offer the Benediction. “
In nomine patri
…”

“I think her parents have offered her the best advice,” Gabe Pollack said when she told him all of this. “Their faith prohibits abortion, and abortions are very dangerous anyway—particularly, I'm told, at this late stage in her pregnancy. I think you should try to persuade her to do what her parents propose.”

“But she says she won't give up the baby. She says the baby is going to be a LeBaron, and she wants it raised as a LeBaron.”

“Which does she want to be—a mother or a debutante? She can't have her cake and eat it, too.”

“Joanna is very stubborn,” Sari said.

“I think your parents are right,” Sari said when they met the following day. “I think you should go away, have the baby, and then let it be placed out for—”

“No,” she said, shaking her head. “I won't do that. I've made up my mind.”

“I just don't see any other solution, Jo.”

“I do,” Joanna said. “I have another plan.”

“What's that?”

“I'll agree to part of their plan. I'll go away for a while. And you'll go with me.”

“
Me?
”

“Yes. You and Peter.”

“Me … and Peter …”

“Yes. You could marry Peter. Why not? He's crazy about you, I can tell. Then you'd go off on your honeymoon, to some faraway place—Europe, perhaps. A week or so later, I would join you there, wherever it is, and have my baby there. The baby is due in December. After it's born, I could come home. I'd miss the first half of the deb season, but I'd be back here for the second half. You and Peter could stay on in Europe for a few months longer—long enough so that it would seem as though the baby could be yours and Peter's, conceived and born on your long honeymoon.”

“That's a crazy idea, Jo!”

“Is it? I don't think so. You'd raise my baby as your own. My baby would still be in the family, raised by the two people I love the most, you and Peter. It wouldn't be like giving up my baby to strangers, which I won't do, anyway.”

“Marry Peter …”

“Crazy about you. I can tell.”

“Oh, no, Jo.”

“You promised to help me. Won't you help me?”

“But—has anyone spoken to Peter about this?”

“Yes. I have.”

“And what does he say?”

“He agrees. Peter,” she said, “will do anything to ensure my happiness.”

“Well,” she said almost angrily, “if Peter wants to marry me, he could at least ask me!”

“He will. As soon as he's sure you'll say yes.”

“And what about your parents?”

“They'll agree. I'll handle them. They'll agree, if I can tell them that you'll say yes.”

“Let me think” she whispered. “Let me think …”

Joanna reached out and covered her hand with her own. “You see,” she said, “I want to keep my baby near to me, even if my baby never knows who I am. Is that so strange, Sari—to want to keep this little new life that's growing inside me close to me, always, even though it never knows that I'm its mother? But I'll know, and you'll know, and Peter will know—but that's all. It'll be our secret, Sari, our wonderful little secret, a little baby that will belong to all three of us. No one else will ever know.”

“But your parents—”

“They'll know, of course, but they'll never tell another living soul.”

“No, I suppose they wouldn't.”

“Help me, Sari. You promised to help me. Help me now.”

“Let me think.”

“Yes, but there isn't much time to lose.
Please
.”

“Well, I'll be damned,” Gabe Pollack said when she had explained Joanna's proposal to him. “She
does
get to have her cake and eat it, too! That little girl is smarter than I gave her credit for. She gets to keep the baby, more or less, and gets to be a debutante as well!”

“But what do you think of it, Gabe?”

“It's a quid pro quo situation, isn't it,” he said. “You do her this favor and, in return, you get to marry one of San Francisco's richest and most attractive young men. It's almost like a business deal, isn't it? But then, this is America, land of the deal.”

“But what do you
think
, Gabe?”

“I think—” he began. Typical of him, she could see, trying to intellectualize the situation, trying to see it from every side. “I think,” he said at last, “that she is asking a great deal of you. She is asking you to be the substitute for a part of her life. She is asking you to pay for one of her mistakes. In return, she's offering you her brother as a reward. But because there's money involved, I think she'll always think that you owe her the greater debt. Do you love him, Sari?”

She hesitated, suddenly embarrassed to confess the depth of her feelings to him. Their romance still seemed too one-sided to discuss it openly with Gabe. “I find him very … attractive,” she said at last.

“Is that all?”

“He's very nice.”

“And he's rich.”

“Yes.”

“Does he love you, do you think?”

“I don't know. I know he likes me. But is love important, Gabe? Is it important to be in love?”

He shook his head. “I can't answer that for you,” he said. “But there's a saying that anyone who marries for money works hard for a living. So I hope there's more to it than that.”

“I think there is,” she said.

Finally, he said, “I can't advise you in this, Sari. I can't tell you what you should or shouldn't do. I think that this is something you've got to work out between yourselves—you and Peter LeBaron.”

“Yes,” she said. And then, “Of course, I used to think that someday I'd marry you.”

“I've spoken to Father Quinn,” Joanna said to her parents, “and he thinks this is an excellent solution.”

“Quinn,” her father said, “always favors any solution that's quick and easy, and keeps the Church's hands clean.”

“I'd hoped for something so much better for Peter,” Constance LeBaron said. “There are so many attractive girls—girls of good family—in San Francisco. Peter could have had his pick.”

“I
like
Sari,” Julius LeBaron said. “And there may be an advantage in the fact that she's not from our so-called social set.”

“What would that be, pray?”

“Think about it a minute, Mother. Sari is definitely from the wrong side of the tracks, as they say. When she and Peter get back to San Francisco with their baby, and when people begin counting backwards on their fingers, as they're bound to do—well, somehow it's more understandable, more acceptable, for a young man of good family to have taken up with a woman of easy virtue, than for a—”

Joanna smiled. “Than for a young woman of good family to
be
a woman of easy virtue,” she said. “I wondered how long it would be before someone came up with that little point.”

Julius LeBaron's face flushed. “Well, you know how people talk.” he said.

“What do you want me to do, Peter?” she said to him. They were in Julius LeBaron's study in the house on California Street, and this meeting had been arranged for them, and they were to make their final decision.

He was not looking at her, but staring miserably into space with an utterly stricken expression on his face. For some reason, she realized, he seemed more shattered by what was happening than anyone else. “Do?” he said at last in a dead voice. “Do? We've got to do what will make my sister happy. That's all there is to do.”

“Do you love me, Peter?”

“Love you?”

“Yes. Just because you've been to bed with me doesn't mean you love me. I know that.”

“We've got to help Jo,” he said. “How did all this happen, Sari? A week ago, I thought I was the luckiest man on earth. But now—now I just don't know.”

“Well, we're here to decide whether to go through with what she proposes. Or not to.”

“I've got to help her. I've got to do my duty. She's my sister—” There were tears in his eyes, and he clenched his right fist and pressed his knuckles hard against his teeth.

“Peter,” she said, and then, almost desperately, leaning toward him, she went on, “I love you, Peter. I love you so much. You're the only man I've ever slept with, and that means something, doesn't it? I love you enough for both of us, Peter, I'm sure of that, and I'm sure I can make you happy. I'm going to make you love me, Peter—I will, wait and see. I'm going to make you love me, and I'm going to make you happy. Will you let me try? I'm willing to try, Peter, if you are, and if you let me—I'll try. I'll try so hard. Will you?”

“Yes.”

“Well, then tell me what you want me to
do!
”

“Marry me,” he said at last. And then, “For my sister's sake.”

“And for our sakes, too!” she cried. “We have to be happy, too, don't we? Don't we deserve to be happy, too? Don't we at least deserve a chance—a chance to try?”

“Yes,” he said. “I'll try.”

And so, the following week, an item appeared in the society pages of the
San Francisco Chronicle:

PETER POWELL L
E
BARON WEDS THE FORMER MISS LATHAM

In a small ceremony attended only by family and close friends, Mr. Peter Powell LeBaron was married to Miss Assaria Latham of Terre Haute, Ind., in the chapel of the Cathedral of St. Peter Martyr, San Francisco.

The bridegroom, long considered one of the city's most eligible bachelors, is the son of Mr. and Mrs. Julius LeBaron of 1023 California Street. Mr. LeBaron is the president of LeBaron Vintners, Inc., wine producers in the Napa, Colusa, and Sonoma Valleys until Prohibition. The bride's parents are both deceased. She is the legal ward of Mr. Gabriel Pollack of San Francisco. The bride wore an heirloom gown of white Valenciennes lace, and carried a Bible garlanded with white orchids and stephanotis. Miss Joanna LeBaron, the bridegroom's sister, was her only attendant.

Following a small reception at the LeBaron home, the bride and groom departed for an extended European honeymoon. Later this month, they will be joined by Miss Joanna LeBaron, who will undertake several months' travel and study of art and history abroad.

Now it is nearly one o'clock in the morning in the White Wedding-Cake House that was being built for them while she and Peter and Joanna were waiting for Melissa to be born in Saint Moritz, and still Sari has not gone to bed. She wants, desperately, to speak to Melissa now, but cannot. Mr. Littlefield's presence in Melissa's apartment precludes this. Perhaps, even now, the two of them are making love—why not? Sari would have nothing to say against this. And so, instead, she pens Melissa a short note:

Melissa dearest
,

I know you are thinking that there is a great deal of explaining to be done, and I am very much prepared to tell you everything you need to know. Please telephone me as soon as you receive this
.

Much love
,

A.L.LeB
.

She will have Thomas slip the note under Melissa's door in the morning.

Surely, once the special circumstances surrounding her birth are explained to her, Melissa will be reasonable, because now, more than ever, Sari needs Melissa on her side. “You will be reasonable, won't you, Melissa?” she says to Melissa's portrait now. “You'll vote on the side of the woman who sacrificed so much to raise you, and not on the side of the mother who gave you up—won't you?” But the enigmatically smiling portrait offers no reply. “You'll help me win this fight, won't you, Melissa?”

Wheeling herself away, Sari tells herself:
I'm going to win
. I'll win, she says, because I was strong enough to make a man love me who was afraid to love me, strong enough to make a lover out of a lover who wasn't one. I'll win because I have the strength, because I have the faith, because I have the will.

Watching her, the house seems to sigh.

We are your house, the house says. Without you, Sari, we would not exist. We were your wedding present.

“Not that I asked for you, or needed you!” she says.

But without
us
, Sari,
you
would not exist, the house says.

Thirteen

BARONET VINEYARDS, INC.

934 Montgomery Street

San Francisco

NOTICE OF SPECIAL MEETING OF SHAREHOLDERS

A special meeting of shareholders of Baronet Vineyards, Inc., will be held in Suite 617–619 of the Fairmont Hotel, San Francisco, California, on Monday, April 30, 1984, at 9:00 o'clock a.m. for the following purposes: